4-5 S 




SookiJj;_4 



f THANKSGIVING SERMON, 



.7- PREACHED AT THE 



30 



; 

^ UNION SERVICE OF THE 

J 
< 

\ FIRST & SOUTH CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES, i 



NEW BRITAIN, CONN. 



3vovem:ber se, ises. 



B'Sr IIE-V-- O- X.. GS-OOIDEIL.X., 

PASTOR OF SOUTH CHURCH. 




HARTFORD: 
PRESS OF CASE, LOCKWOOD & COMPANY. 

1863. 



S-^ 



/I, ^ 



THANKSGIVING SERMON, 



PREACHED AT THE 



UNION SERVICE OF THE 



FIRST & SOUTH CONGREGATIOML CHURCHES, 



NEW BRITAIN, CONN., 



3VO VE3£BEK, 36, 1863. 



PASTOR OF SOUTH CHURCH. 










HARTFORD: 

PRESS OF CASE, LOCKWOOD & COMPANY. 
1863. 






New Britain, Nov. 28th, 1863. 

Rev. Mr. Goodell, 

Dear Sir : — The undersigned, having Hstened, with much satisfac- 
tion, to your excellent discourse on Thanksgiving day, and believing 
that its circulation among our citizens and our soldiers, will prove 
beneficial, most respectfully request of you a copy for the press. 
Allow us to add that we believe we represent the general feehng of 
those who had the pleasure of hearing the discourse alluded to. 
Very truly. 

Your friends, 
F. H. North, Henry Stanley, 

Chas. Peck, Oliver Stanley, 

H. G. Brown, Coas. Northend, 

J. N. Bartlett, p. Corbin, 

C. A. Warner, James Stanley, 

L. F. JcDD, W. Gladden, 

Wm. H. Smith, T. W. Stanley. 



New Britain, Dec. 3d, 1863. 
Messrs. F. H. North, 

Chas. Peck, and others ; — 
Gentlemen : — The sermon which you courteously ask for publica- 
tion was prepared for the public service on Thanksgiving day. But 
if you judge further good may be done by printing it, the manuscript 
is at your disposal. 

I am respectfully, 

Yours, 

C. L. Goodell. 



SERMON. 



DEUTERONOMY, 26 : 19. 

" And to make thee high above all nations which he hath made, in praise, and 
in name, and in honor, and that thou mayest be a holy people unto the Lord thy 
God, as he hath spoken." 

This day of National Thanksgiving is like a watch-tower 
of the ancient Hebrews, into which the prophets ascended to 
read the signs of the times, and to receive the solemn vision 
of God. We have laid aside the ordinary cares of life, and 
come up to Mount Ziou, that our minds may be illumined 
by the Infinite Light, and our hearts led in the way of holi- 
ness and truth. 

It is always the misfortune of those who live in perilous 
times, that they do not realize the great interests at stake. 
Standing in a forest, we forget that the little springs at our 
feet, are rolled onward into mighty rivers. Surrounded by 
the clouds and darkness of war, we become absorbed in petty 
temporary interests, and blind to the vast issues involved. 
This day affords a high outlook, that with consecrated heart 
and purged eye, we may forget ourselves, and see afar. 

And first of all may the voice of praise rise from our lips, 
and the incense of thanksgiving ascend from our hearts, to 
Almighty God from whom all blessings come. Let us bless 
Him for healthful seasons, for abun^^ant harvests, for the 
means of knowledge, for social blessings, and for religious 
liberty. Let us thank God for comfortable homes, for holy 



affections, for the lessons and disciplines of faith, and for the 
hopes of immortality. 

Let us rejoice and praise God, that in the midst of war, 
He has granted us so many mercies, and that, notwithstand- 
ing our grievous sins. He has given us so many assurances 
of final victory, and a righteous peace. Thou Eternal ! 
let our hearts rise higher than all interests that entangle, 
than all doubts that bewilder, than all passions that ensnare, 
than all prejudices that obscure ; that we may be the willing 
instruments in Thy hands, in the establishment of righteous- 
ness, justice and truth in the earth. 

To those accustomed to read the providences of God, His 
hand seems scarcely less manifest in the planting and train- 
ing of this nation, than in that of the Hebrew ; consequently 
the words of our text addressed to the Israelites, in an im- 
portant sense, may be applied to us. It was the Divine pur- 
pose to make this nation high among all nations which he 
hath made, in name and in praise and in honor, that we 
might be a holy people unto the Lord as he hath spoken. 

In the light of this truth, let us reflect upon the moral 
worth of our Federal Union, and our consequent duty to 
preserve it. 

Where shall we find the measure, with which to estimate 
this fair heritage of our Fathers ? If any man judge of a 
government by the " good things of this life" which it 
secures, where can one be found, which has conferred so 
many favors, and distributed them so equally ? If any 
would value a government according to the general peace 
and happiness it is fitted to give, on what nation does the 
sun shine, which, in this respect, surpasses ours ? Going 
higher, if any would regard " the life as more than meat," 
and government as the guardian of liberty, and the hand- 
maid of advancing civilization, what nation is better adapted 
to the work than ours ? 

1. The value of our Federal Union may be judged of, by 
considering the extent of the preparation which preceded it. 

You might have learned something of the character of 
Solomon's temple, by visiting the quarries in the mountains 



where the material was preparing before a stone was laid. 
So you may gauge the value of our institutions, by studying 
the old despotisms which gave rise to them. The kingdoms 
of Europe have been the workshops of republicanism for cen- 
turies. The material for our temple of liberty was prepar- 
ing, long before the site for its location was discovered. It 
was indeed put up on these shores, at last, in a i^ay, without 
the sound of saw or hammer. But it was not a hasty work, 
entered into without consideration, and conducted without 
wisdom. Every stone had been carved in the mountains of 
the Old World, and brought carefully over the sea. In spirit 
and essence, no government is so old as ours. Into none 
have entered such ages of preparation, and such treasures of 
wisdom and experience. 

Your grape-vines thrive best on old decayed bones. The 
vine which God brought out of Egypt and planted here, 
sends its roots to the brain of Milton and Hamden, of Plato 
and Moses, and draws nourishment from all the past. The 
names of our towns are taken from every great historic 
nation. We have a Bebron, an Athens, a Corinth, a Rome, 
a Paris, a Manchester and London. So our civilization is a 
golden braid, each age furnishing its tested strand, and all 
together, combining what is best, and excluding what is 
worst, in the experience of man. 

Those who came first to our shores to begin their work, 
were like the three hundred men of Gideon, twice sifted 
from their fellows ; each a tried man, standing in his place, 
with a light in his hand, which was as the lamp of God, with 
no pitcher to hide it. 

No one can properly understand the worth of this nation, 
who does not study these marked Providences in the cur- 
rents of history, pointing toward it, and preparing for it. 
Astronomers often notice the purturbations of a planet, yet 
see no disturbing cause. By and by, an orb, new to science, 
sweeps into the field of vision, and the mystery is solved. 
An unseen world is found to have reached out its mystic 
arms through the spaces, and rocked the foundations of a 
neighboring sphere. So the disturbances in the Old World — 



6 

among things civil, religious and scientific, from Columbus 
to Newton — can be explained only by the fact that God was 
making preparation for the New World, which, rising up out 
of the sea, was even then playing into the Old, and shaping 
its affairs by an invisible hand. To set the train in motion, 
Columbus discovered a new hemisphere, and opened fresh 
channels of commerce for the nations. Galileo poised his 
glass to the stars, and told the Pope that the world did move, 
thus giving a new impulse to science. Faust invented the 
printing-press, and placed the torch of learning in the hands 
of the common people. Luther struck the fetters from the 
Bible, and changed the basis of ecclesiastical governments. 
Calvin conceived of free institutions modeled after the sim- 
plicity of the primitive church, and formed a party whose 
battle ground was Germany and England, and whose refuge 
was the New World. Oliver Cromwell snatched the scepter 
of civil government from the grasp of arbitrary power — and 
failing to place it in the hands of the people, passed it over 
the sea. And all this, that a free government might be ad- 
ministered here, by an enlightened. Christian people, over a 
territory, wide as the ocean over which Columbus sailed. 

A nation commencing its career with a preparation like 
this, must be valued as an instrument in the hand of God for 
the accomplishment of great ends. We have no right to treat 
it lightly. We can not shut our eyes to its mission. God 
has set a sacred impress upon it which we must respect. 

2. The moral value of our Federal Union may be seen 
from its geographical position- and its combination of the 
great historic forces of civilization. 

God has established here a fresh and independent center 
of Christian influence. When Columbus first discovered 
this continent, he regarded it as simply a new way to the Old 
World ; the New, in his judgment, was to be only a tribu- 
tary to the Old. So thought all the nations of Europe. 
They refused to believe that God had purposes which reached 
beyond them, and that he could remove his candlestick from 
Europe to America, as he had already, from Asia to Europe. 
Spain regarded the New World as a vast gold mine for her 



material aggrandizement. England looked upon it as a de- 
pendency, ministering to her love of wealth and power. 
Until awakened by the thunder of Saratoga and Yorktown, 
she never admitted that there was anything absurd in a con- 
tinent's being governed by a little island, three thousand 
miles away. But God is wiser than man. It was not des- 
tined that America should be Europe over again, and nothing 
more. This continent did not come upon the arena of 
modern history, to give England a cotton plantation — Ire- 
land a potato field — France a glove market — Austria a 
throne for its hungry princes, and Africa a gigantic slave-pen. 
The New "World was ordained in the providence of God, to 
have its new government, its new man, and its new and im- 
portant mission among the nations of the earth. Civiliza- 
tion never repeats itself — its watchword is " onward." There 
has been but one Jerusalem — but one Athens and Rome. 
It were not possible, even if it were desirable, to build 
another England, or France, or Spain, on this side of the 
Atlantic. Every great emigration results in a distinctive 
civihzation, unlike that in which it had its origin. Greece 
received emigration and arts from Egypt, but Greece was 
not like Egypt ; it was a new and living power. Rome was 
also colonized by the Greeks, but Rome differed from Athens 
as much as Athens from Thebes. England was peopled by 
the Teutonic stock ; England, however, is not a copy, but an 
original, with a characters and mission of its own. No more 
is America the counterpart of Europe from which it sprung ; 
it is a new creation, breathing a divine life, and raised up for 
especial service. This nation was not designed to be, can 
not be, like anything which history has produced in the Old 
World. Providence does not go backward. You can not 
nail to-day into the coffin of yesterday, neither can you bind 
the spirit of American liberty with the shackles of past cen- 
turies, nor cramp its expanding powers into the old forms of 
decaying despotisms. It must develop itself according to its 
own law, and adjust its institutions to its peculiar wants and 
necessities. We have already regarded ourselves as an out- 
lying province of the Old World too long. Our political in- 



8 

dependence has indeed been achieved, but we need a second 
emancipation ; and this war is securing it. When England 
and France turned away from us, we whimpered at first, like 
an overgrown child — but we shall be led thereby to assert 
an independent manhood. The sooner we think our own 
thoughts, and go our own ways, accepting the destiny as- 
signed us, and laboring in the freshness and vigor of a dis- 
tinct and newly created life, the better for us. Hence- 
forth we shall no more look over the sea for our pre- 
cepts and examples, but upward to Him who has thus 
far led us, and onward to our field of labor. And it is 
interesting to see how God, who anticipates the direction of 
the great movements of civilization, and raises up nations 
purposely fitted to stand at the centers of influence as instru- 
ments for the accomplishment of His purposes, has given to 
this nation a geographical position, and a territorial greatness 
and wealth as much surpassing all other nations as its civil 
institutions are in advance of the age. Time has proved 
that Europe, which was thought to be the center, is only a 
way station in the march of civilization to the New World. 
Our nation occupies an area as large as a dozen European 
dynasties. The whole of Great Bjitain might be easily sub- 
merged in our northern lakes, and in all the physical 
resources which constitute a great nation, and put it in con- 
trol of the keys of a world-wide power, it never has had, and 
never can have an equal. To give a single illustration — a 
committee recently reported in the Parliament of Great Brit- 
ain, that by extending the Grand Trunk Railway to the Pa- 
cific, England might reach Cliina and her dependencies in the 
East, nineteen days sooner than by her present route ; and the 
prediction was ventured, that soon the vast commerce between 
India and Western Europe, would pass through America, in 
this way increasing its population, and magnifying its pros- 
pective importance a hundred fold. Thus God has placed us 
as a light at the conjunction of the great streams of influ- 
ence. The world's highways meet and cross here, and for 
generations to come, those who occupy these seats of privi- 
lege will be called upon to perform the work of a free and 
enlightened Christian nation. What Germany was to the 



9 

cause of pure religion in the sixteenth century — what Eng- 
lish liberty was to Christian civilization in the seventeenth 
century — that, and more, the Federal Union now is to the 
world. And what is this but the measure of the moral worth 
of our institutions ? God may not love us, nor care to save 
us for ourselves ; but for the sake of our posterity and the 
great future into which the boundaries of his kingdom run, 
he will establish the integrity, and secure the freedom, and 
maintain the honor of this nation. Who doubts it ? The 
workmen indeed die, but the work goes on. Shall we, start- 
ing thus on a new career, with the sunlight of a golden 
future on our foreheads, turn back to confederacies and des- 
potisms? to feudal aristocracies and slavery? No! God 
forbid ! This lurid light of war, which flashes along the sky, 
is not the funeral pyre of American liberty, but the dawning 
glory of her immortal youth. 

3. The moral worth of our Federal Union is seen in the 
principles it embodies. A nation's worth depends upon the 
value of the truths it holds up to the world, and its ability and 
determination to maintain them. The province of Egypt is 
worth just what the principle of an absolute despotism is 
worth to the cause of humanity. A nation founded on slave, 
ry would be worth all that the doctrine of oppression is worth 
to the cause of Christian civilization in this age. And God 
evidently sets no higher value upon it now, than when he 
swallowed up Pharoah and his host in the Red Sea. 

In every age, some one nation has occupied the advance in 
the struggle for civil and religious liberty. Two centuries 
ago, the service which England performed for the world, was 
beyond all computation. Oliver Cromwell spake, and relig- 
ious liberty took heart throughout Europe. But that position 
is being taken from her and given to America. That which 
now promises to accomplish most for the good of man is repre- 
sented by our Union. Bring before you, for the purposes of 
thanksgiving and praise, the principles of which our nation's 
flag is the symbol and hope. 

Our government gives every citizen the right to become the 
owner of soil, and thus restores to the world the old doctrine 
2 



10 

which God gave to the Jews. A free soil is nature's Magna 
Cliarta of liberty and virtue. Take away this right, and you es- 
tablish an aristocracy by which you entail upon one class dan- 
gerous wealth and power, and upon another liopeless oppression, 
poverty and toil. It has been the device of tyranny in all ages, 
to wrest the soil from the common people, for it carries with it 
liberty and independence, and all the rights and privileges of 
citizenship. Here, the land is free to every man ; none so poor 
as to be shut out from the benefits it confers. The widow may 
keep her cow ; no land-holder can take it for rents. The poor 
man may possess the lieritage which God gave him — a free soil — 
and build his castle thereon, and rear his children in content- 
ment and peace, and while the old flag waves over him, no 
one, not even Ahab the king, can eject him save for misman- 
agement of his own. This fact is the source of untold strength 
and encouragement to the poor. It binds a man to his coun- 
try, gives him weight and stability of character and incites just 
and laudable ambition. 

Our government honors free labor. It is the only coun- 
try in the world, where the child of poverty and toil may 
be honored and respected as a man, and where the lowest 
classes have equal opportunity with the highest, to rise to 
every civil station in the land. Poverty excludes no man 
from respectability. There is no barrier to check tiie advance- 
ment of the humblest child in all this vast republic. What 
he chooses, that he is as free to aspire to, by honorable compe- 
tition, as any of his fellows. In the old world, there is little 
hope for the poor. Rank is privileged, and has secured to 
itself wealth and power, and hereditary right by law. Pover- 
ty is hedged in on every hand, and is forced to grind hopeless- 
ly on, in the prison-house of toil. These truths are as familiar 
to you as household words. But in a time like this, when the 
foundations of our government are shaken, it is well for us to 
review them and reassert their worth. What poor man can 
look up to the flag of his country, and think what it secures 
to him and his posterity, and not shed tears of gratitude to 
Almighty God ! While it waves over him he is a man. No 
arbitrary power can take away his rights. He is free to fill up 



11 

the measure of his manhood, and to eat without molestation, 
the fruit of his toil. 

Our government also encourages popular education. There 
is no monoply of learning here. By a law of the land, a 
free school is opened near every man's door, and his children 
are invited to enter and take into their own hands, the keys 
of knowledge and power. Ignorance has been the fruitful 
source of oppression and wrong in all ages. The few have sat 
in the seats of learning, and excluded the many, holding 
them in a bitter and degrading bondage. Here the genius of 
our free schools lifts up every child at its birth, and places it 
in the highway to usefulness and honor. In England, the 
common working man must entail his poverty and ignorance 
upon his child. In America, while he toils, his labor is sweet- 
ened by the thought that his children are at school, fitting for 
a position to which he could never attain. And while this 
Federal Union is preserved, such may be the solace of every 
obscure and humble man. Our common schools are educat- 
ing to day, five millions of rising freemen. The one hundred 
and twenty colleges dotted over our land, have graduated 
thirteen thousand men, and are annually sending out an army 
of three thousand, skilled in all valuable learning, for the 
great work of the age. Who can estimate the worth of a na- 
tion which is accomplishing a work like this ? 

Our Federal Union honors civil liberty. After generations 
of conflict, a government has been founded under which man, 
in the highest and best sense, can be free. Oh ! how sweet 
that word sounds. Liberty — Liberty — speak it out, no man 
can harm you ! Liberty ! — let it ring through every valley. 
Liberty ! — let it sound from ocean to ocean. For ages, men 
have tasted it in the air, have smelt it in the mountains — 
have heard its music in the leaping rills, and have been forced 
to bow down to chains and slavery, and to die with the worm 
of despotism gnawing at their vitals. But here, wliile the 
banner of our country floats over us, we are Freemen. There 
are none to question our rights. This one boon which our 
Union confers " without money and without price," has cost 
the world more lives than the Union now contains. For it, 



12 

Europe has been lighted up with the fires of martyrdom, and 
her prisons filled with the bravest and noblest of earth. For 
it, her scaffolds have been stained with gore, and her battle- 
fields liave drank of human blood like the Spring rain. And 
shall we place no value upon civil liberty now ? Shall we hold 
that Constitution and Union which secure it, as of little moral 
worth ? Shall we let tliat flag which represents it, be lorn 
down by traitorous hands ? The response is " Oh ! the sacri- 
fice — Oh ! the blood it will cost." And none can feel more 
deeply than I do, the weight of that sorrow which presses 
upon the countless broken households of our land. But is it 
the brave and suffering soldier who complains, or those who, 
refusing to lend their aid, remain at home to find fault ? If 
men can not shed blood for freedom, and make sacrifice for 
principle, they are born in the wrong age, and belong to the 
wrong nation. Those wlio are now upholding tlie flag of our 
country, came of a race, who for centuries have dared to suf- 
fer for truth, and even have counted it sweet to die for liber- 
ty. And now when " the sons of God " are called together 
for one more struggle in behalf of the " good old cause," if 
any are found among them counseling otherwise, it is because 
Satan has come also. I know some will say this nation, as 
a whole, has not honored liberty. I grant it ; and the 
thought makes my blood tingle with shame to my fingers 
ends. But I hope. Into a field in the South of England, a 
refuse mill stone was thrown. Up through tlie hole in the 
centre, shot an oak ; it grew till it filled the hole and raised 
the stone up with it, some inches from the ground. The 
problem was, whether the stone would burst asunder, or the 
tree would die. At length, in a storm which tried every fibre 
of the trunk, the stone gave way, and the oak lived. Slavery 
has hung like a mill-stone around our tree of Liberty, threat- 
ening to destroy it, till the hearts of good men have sunk 
within tiicm. But this war has cracked the stone, and now 
the grand old tree, rising loftier than before, bids fair to brave 
tlie storms of a thousand winters. Our flag to day, thank 
God 1 means Liberty ! And Slavery — to change the figure — 
will find this stone with which it sought to overthrow the 



13 

Union, hanging around its own neck, till it is sunk, like Mil- 
ton's rebel angels, ten tliousand fathoms deep 

" In adamantine chains and penal fire ;" 

and the nations of the earth, beholding, shall shout Alleluia ! 
while the smoke of its torment ascendeth up forever and ever. 

Thus the most cursory view makes it evident, that our 
Federal Union is the pledge of those principles which are 
dearest to the heart of man. Its value to every one who 
loves the cause of humanity is above all price. It embodies, 
doubtless, in greater purity than any other government, all 
those active forces of Christian civilization, which are placing 
this age in advance of the past, and this nation, in the fore- 
front of the present ; hence the battle shock which has come 
upon us. Had the moral sentiment of this nation been like 
that of Spain for instance, we might have lived in peace. 
The Constitution of our country, interpreted according to the 
spirit of its founders, is the best fruit which the cause of civil 
liberty has thus far borne. Tlie Declaration of Independence 
touched the " high water mark " of the eighteenth century ; 
the Proclamation of Emancipation, by President Lincoln, has 
reached the highest point in the nineteenth. Should this 
nation go down, man, as man, would lose half the sacred ness 
of his personality. What check would there be upon arbitra- 
ry power ? What hope for the poor and oppressed ? 

It is evident therefore, men and brethren, that in exact pro- 
portion to the moral worth of this Union, is our duty to up- 
hold it. If its value seems to grow upon us, defying compu- 
tation, so also does the obligation to preserve it. The poor 
man loves his home, however humble, and will defend it, for 
it is his all. Shall we have an inheritance like this, given to 
us, and when rebel hands are rending it from us, turn away 
with indifference ? Be not deceived as to the nature of this 
conflict. If this Union goes down it will never rise again. 
If we would continue to be, what, from our infancy has been 
our joy and pride — American citizens — we must act the man 
in this crisis of our country's history. The men who oppose 
this government will never yield till their sword arm is para- 



14 

Ijzed. They threw themselves into this war, knowing, as 
one of their prominent leaders confessed, that they were 
" candidates for the halter; " and they will not pause in their 
course of demolition and ruin, till this national government 
is leveled in the dust. 

A slave vessel carrying four hundred negroes kidnapped in 
Africa, to the southern market, was confronted on the ocean 
by a man-of-war. The captain of the slaver ordered the ne- 
groes to be brought up and tied, one by one, to a long rope 
running round the deck, and fastened to a great weight. 
Wlien it became evident that there was no escape from the 
man-of-war, the captain ordered the weight to which the ne- 
groes were tied, to be thrown into the sea, and thus with a 
gurgling groan, four hundred human beings went down to 
death. The rebel leaders have, in like manner, bound to- 
gether the foundation principles of our Union — liberty, just- 
ice, law, order and truth — all that we love for its past service, 
and delight in for its future promise — and cast them over- 
board, determined that rather than yield one iota, they shall 
all perish together in the hell of rebellion. The rescue must 
be as quick and decisive, as the attack is bold and desperate. 
Days must perform the work of months, and months accom- 
plish the mission of years. Already great results have been 
achieved. The news which comes over the wires to-day, from 
Gen. Grant, near Chattanooga, inspires fresh confidence and 
hope. Another battle fought ! Another victory won ! But 
much remains to be done. 

In girding ourselves once more however to meet our pres- 
ent duties, we do not need to be pointed to the history of 
other nations for heroic examples. Our own history abounds 
in incidents of lofty heroism and sacrifice. Do you recall 
Bunker Hill and Lexington ? Do you remember the blood 
that crimsoned the snow at Valley Forge ? Those frozen, 
bleeding feet were your fathers' ! What nation can point 
to a brighter record ? And shall not the sons be worthy of 
their sires ? Coming nearer home — have you forgotten our 
last national holiday, when the news of a two-fold victory 
came — telling what your husbands, brothers and sons had 



15 

achieved at Gettysburg, and on the Mississippi ? How grand- 
ly the stars shone out that night ! The eartli put on a man- 
tle of glory ; the air was stung into melody by the whispers 
of invisible spirits foretelling the grand hour of universal lib- 
erty. Now, after all this toil, and suffering, and sacrifice, 
bringing us to the very gates of victory, and opening the fold- 
ing doors to a wider liberty, and a purer and firmer govern- 
ment, shall it be said that we, with such an end full in view, 
faltered and paused ? No, never ! He who counsels this, 
forgets God. The work will go on. 

A German baron constructed a vast wind-harp, by stretch- 
ing a cable from his castle turret to the mountain side beyond. 
There were those who jeered at his folly. The summer 
zephyrs played past it, and it was silent ; the autumn winds 
swept it, but it gave no sound. By and by, on a winter's 
night, when a tempest howled up the valley, the baron's harp 
hummed, hour after hour, with a strange unearthly melody, 
its deep tones rising and falling in the storm. So now the 
sinews of war have been strung, but there is a momentary 
pause and hush in the nation's heart — an expectancy and 
longing as if for some unspoken word, awful in the grandeur 
of its tone and promise. Soon, " the great winds of Jehovah" 
will sweep along the earth, and, as if to the music of millen- 
nial trumpets, the hosts of freedom will go forth to final vic- 
tory. God speed the hour. 



